ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Feb 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2026
Nuclear Technology
January 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
DOE announces NEPA exclusion for advanced reactors
The Department of Energy has announced that it is establishing a categorical exclusion for the application of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) procedures to the authorization, siting, construction, operation, reauthorization, and decommissioning of advanced nuclear reactors.
According to the DOE, this significant change, which goes into effect today, “is based on the experience of DOE and other federal agencies, current technologies, regulatory requirements, and accepted industry practice.”
Kyekyoon(Kevin) Kim, Qichen Feng
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 5 | December 1995 | Pages 1790-1796
Technical Paper | Inertial Confinement Fusion Targets | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30414
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A novel gas-dynamic levitation technique has been developed to facilitate noncontact coating of spherical ICF targets. Using this technique three metal balls 450 µm, 650 µm and 950 µm in diameter were levitated very stably for several hours, with the balls rotating continuously. Unlike the conventional gas-dynamic levitation scheme in which a single gas-emitting fixture, placed below an object, lifts it up and contains it in a confined volume, the present scheme relies on two fixtures, one placed under and the other above the object. The bottom fixture, as is with the conventional scheme, is a gas emitter; however, the top one is a gas collector shaping the flow field around the object so as to confine the object near the axis of symmetry of the levitation system. As a result, the present system exhibits excellent stability and robustness, and is immune to such external disturbances as nonuniform temperature fields and air currents, and small changes in the levitation gas pressure. The apparatus is inexpensive to fabricate and simple to operate. The details of the apparatus and the preliminary data demonstrating the capability of the levitation scheme are presented. A target coating method, compatible with the present target levitation scheme and suitable for uniform coating of ICF targets, is indicated.